This invention generally pertains to social networking, and more specifically to advertising via a social networking system.
Social networks, or social utilities that track and enable connections between users (including people, businesses, and other entities), have become prevalent in recent years and allow users to communicate information more efficiently. For example, a social networking system user may post contact information, background information, job information, hobbies, and/or other user-specific data to the social networking system. Other users can then review the posted data by browsing user profiles or searching for profiles including specific data. Social networking systems also allow users to associate themselves with other users, thus creating a web of connections among the users of the social networking system. These connections among the users can be leveraged by the social networking system to offer more relevant information to each user in view of user-stated interests.
Additionally, social networking systems enable users to interact with other users or objects by performing various actions. For example, users may post comments to pages associated with other users, view images, view video, listen to audio data or perform other actions on various objects maintained by the social networking system. Actions performed by a user are frequently distributed to other users connected to the user who performed the action. Often, social networking systems generate newsfeeds for their users, where various stories in the newsfeed describe actions performed by other users connected to the user viewing the newsfeed. A social networking system may prioritize stories in the newsfeed so that stories likely to be of interest to the viewing user are more readily accessible to the viewing user. For example, stories describing actions performed by users with whom the viewing user frequently interacts or describing actions performed on objects in which the user has a particular interest may be easier to view via the newsfeed.
Users may advertise products or events or otherwise communicate content to other users via a social networking system. For example, content may be described by stories indicating other users' interactions with the social networking system. These stories may be included in newsfeeds presented to social networking system users connected to users performing the interactions. As a user may have different levels of interactions with different social networking system users, the social networking system may determine that some users are not likely to be interested a story describing a user's interaction, which reduces the effectiveness of the social networking system in communicating content. Hence, users may seek to increase the likelihood of a particular story being presented to other social networking system users, allowing more effective communication of content.